


September 12th

by AJfanfic



Category: Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Victor made the creature a companion, Walton and the Creature talk, about what happened to the creatures companion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:53:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22929016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AJfanfic/pseuds/AJfanfic
Summary: A scene inserted into the end of Frankenstein, exploring what might have happened if Victor had created a companion for the creature.
Relationships: Victor Frankenstein & Frankenstein's Creature
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	September 12th

“Your repentance,” I said, “is now superfluous. If you had listened to the voice of conscience and heeded the stings of remorse before you had urged your diabolical vengeance to this extremity, Frankenstein would yet have lived. If you had been constant to your promises and not turned so violently on him who pitied you, he would yet have lived.”

“How can you who so sympathized with his plight have so little for me, more wretched than he, because unlovable even by my own kind. Months ago, I’d have killed you where you stood, and yet now find I cannot fault you for your lack of knowledge. After all, your guide through our epic was missing a fragment of the text. He now finds peace in the arms of those I have torn from him, and at their hands, I shall find nothing but further misery. Driven on by only the hope that it is in fact nothingness that awaits me, I shall cross these icy peaks to the furthest North and there I shall build my pyre. All knowledge of myself and my creation shall be scattered as my body’s ash in the freezing wind. My only possible solace lies there, in this wasteland devoid of all things green and gentle, the only place to which my soul could be native.” He turned to leave, through the window whence he had come. Were he not born down by some invisible burden, he surely would have gone before I had spoken.

“Wait!” I cried and implored him to tell me the scene missing from Frankenstein’s narrative. I found I could not meet his gaze, but did my utmost to banish the terror I felt from my expression and kept my eyes trained over his shoulder.

“I have no desire to remain the duration of the tale, but,” he looked down at the pale figure of my dearest friend, “there is no harm in a final confession, only the slight potential of mercy. Very well. You know of the female he made, at my request, and of her death, correct?”

“Yes, I do.”

“When I first looked upon her, I found myself at once repulsed in greater measure than even my own reflection had horrified before and drawn to her as I have never been to anything else. She was as I was, in every facet of her wretched disposition and I loved and pitied her at once. Frankenstein felt only terror and I believe, regretted his promise the moment it was completed. He fell upon her in such a rage as would have killed his newest creation before she had fully awoken had I not torn him from her. I’d have killed him then but she fled, disappearing into the murky night, and finding her consumed my mind.

“I searched, ceasing only for the briefest rest, for two weeks before I found her. The entire time, I was haunted by her face, before me whether I closed my lids or not. Her eyes had fallen on me only momentarily, but there reflected had been the same horror I’d felt and none of the love. Without suffering, without any conception of the cruelty of the world or her own position in it, she had looked on me just as William had, with a child’s instinctive fear of the hellish. I had hoped to spare her the suffering I had felt but I began to wonder if it would be possible for her to love me without it, if I should not wait for her to seek me out instead of continuing my pursuit.

“Yet, I found I had no choice but to continue, driven on by a passionate longing that pulled nearly physically at me. Despite my hasty desperation, I was too late. I found her in a field near the shore, some farmer’s poor plot.” He paused as if to collect himself and I forced myself to look at him. To my shock, I found the creature’s yellow eyes shone with tears. He took an uneven breath and continued. “She’d been killed, I can only assume by the first of your kind she encountered. The sight will never leave me, the only escape from it will I find in death. Her, monstrous and unnatural as myself, murdered. I remember when I first came to consciousness, no more than a child in my mind for all my stature was great. Most heinous crime against one who doesn’t understand the act! I speak from experience. Young William stands just behind her in my dreams!

“You cannot fathom my pain at that moment, undiminished even now. I flung myself upon her body, overcome with a need to be near to her I had never had a moment with before her destruction. I’d have remained there to this day had rage not caught me in its familiar tide. It crashed over me in waves and the roar of it drown out any thought to moderation. I howled like a savage thing until the moon was high. I tore branches free with my bare hands and built her a pyre, wailing all along. Having come so close to the heights of my desires, the fall was all the greater. The flames leaped joyfully at her body and quickly consumed the grasses around us, spreading wildly until it appeared a lake of fire. The warmth near singed my skin and I was reminded again of the fickle kindness of this world. I vowed, then, to pursue my enemies to the ends of it, first the cruel creator who spurned his child to death, then the remainder of humanity.

“I strangled Clerval on that same coast, barely recognizing him as a particular friend of Frankenstein through the red of my vision. It wasn’t enough, although the illness he fell prey to after my crime suggested it was more than I’d thought it had been. I wished I had killed him more cruelly. Elizabeth I killed on their first night of married life. It felt generous, I’d given them longer than I had with my only sympathizer. It was as though some force possessed me and pushed me on across the world, always just out of his reach. I knew as we traveled north that the hunt would have to end soon and began to long for it. He could no longer chase and I had run out of the will to flee.”

I found myself moved by his words. He seemed a being of the finest feelings for all that he was capable also of the lowest acts. Were not, too, all humans? Only Frankenstein’s warning kept me from completely sympathy with the wretched creature before me. “Your tragedy does not make right that which you wrought on him. Frankenstein did as you asked, he deserved no portion of your wrath. Had I not heard his tale as well, I might mourn for you.”

“I don’t ask for your grief! Yours are the last human eyes that shall see my wretched form. Soon,” he cried with sad and solemn enthusiasm, “I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace, or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.”

He sprang from the cabin window as he said this, upon the ice raft which lay close to the vessel. He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.

**Author's Note:**

> This was an assignment for a class, but I liked how it turned out, so I figured I'd post it here.


End file.
